Pumpkins
by cosmicrays
Summary: The boys enjoy a charming Halloween evening. Rudolph is now human, but the memories of his past still haunt him. Luckily he has Tony to offer comfort.


I honestly can't believe I went there.  
...but I did.

Anyways, I love this movie; it's my absolute favorite to watch during the Halloween season. Unfortunately thanks to fanfiction however, my childhood is now warped. It's now Halloween, I just watched _The Little Vampire_ for the second time this month, and I'm depressed that it's over _and_ that Halloween is over tonight.

I'm sure you all care about my bitching. /sarcasm

**Summary: **The boys enjoy a charming Halloween evening. Rudolph is now human, but the memories of his past still haunt him. Luckily he has Tony to offer comfort.

* * *

"What do you mean you've never carved a jack-o'-lantern before?"

The other boy shrugged. "I just haven't, I guess." He couldn't be serious, he just couldn't! There was no way that Rudolph had lived over 300 years without carving a single jack-o'-lantern; it was almost blasphemy to the younger—_much_ younger, technically speaking—boy. Tony wondered how vampires celebrated Halloween anyways; maybe they threw a gigantic vampire party? Maybe there were witches and ghosts and goblins too— ah, he was getting distracted.

"Well, Rudolph, guess what we're doing tonight?" He grinned at his best friend.

Later that afternoon, on the brink of twilight, the two boys were walking on the side of the road back to Tony's home, both carrying his own pumpkin. Rudolph's sister Anna wanted to go along with them, but they had convinced her that they were only going to smash the pumpkins as "a boy's way of celebrating the holiday" which she immediately turned her nose to the air in disgust. "How dreadful! Certainly not romantic in the slightest," she chided. Gregory was out with some friends his age (that is, the age he remained for several hundred years), probably cashing in on the _trick_ of Trick-or-Treating. As for Rudolph's parents, they had planned on taking an evening stroll, which Anna would be accompanying now as well. They were likely to run into their older son, if he and his friends were vandalizing and/or attempting séances in one of the many cemeteries, abandoned castles, woods, or any number of creepy places in the area.

As for Tony and Rudolph, they were determined to carve pumpkins into grinning, ghastly, ghoulish-looking jack-o'-lanterns... or at least that was Tony's plan. Rudolph was just going along for the ride. Eventually they arrived at Tony's castle, where they met with his parents just as they were about to depart for a party at the McAshton's mansion. Relationships between Tony's parents and Lord McAshton had been somewhat strained since the Scotsman had called Tony a vampire _and_ explained how Bob needed to drive a stake through his son's heart. Tony wasn't particularly fond of the man either, after being locked in a mausoleum, but ever since Rudolph had become a human, he attended school with Tony— and the McAshton twins. The boys eventually felt bad for the twins and explained their act of revenge, apologizing thoroughly. Surprisingly, instead of retaliating, the twins apologized as well for tormenting Tony and the four called a truce. They were now rather good friends, and Tony had asked his parents to make amends with Lord McAshton. Not to mention that his dad was still in charge of constructing the golf course, and attending this party could be beneficial for his career.

They bid farewell to the boys, wishing them a Happy Halloween before leaving. A sitter was inside waiting for them to introduce themselves, and would help them carve their jack-o'-lanterns if necessary. "We don't need any help, thanks," Tony stated matter-of-factly. The sitter nodded with a smile, and Rudolph chuckled at his friend's confident demeanor. They gathered their supplies and headed up to Tony's room. His parents had already carved their own jack-o'-lanterns and placed them on the steps of the front door. The boys would put their pumpkins on the balcony's ledge.

"I don't understand why American's have such a strange attraction to this holiday." Rudolph stated when they began hollowing out the gords. They threw away the gunk from inside into a pale sitting beside them. Spoons and hands were their tools for scooping out the guts of the pumpkins. "From what I've learned in school, they make All Hallow- er, Halloween, into such a big deal. And carving pumpkins! You're American, not Irish, Tony." Rudolph tilted his head as he observed his friend for a moment. "Or do you have Irish ancestry?"

"I'm not sure. I think my mom mentioned one time that she had 'Irish Blood'... but I think Thompson is an English name, or at least that's what my dad said. Why?"

"Well," Rudolph began, "the practice of carving gords into lanterns on All Hallow's Eve was an Irish tradition. It spread to England a few centuries before I was born, but..." He trailed off.

"But what?" Tony pressed.

Rudolph hesitated, then continued. "Don't take this personally Tony, but the practice of carving pumpkins was mostly an Irish immigrant and peasant tradition. We aristocrats thought of it as foolish and degrading to our name to carve pumpkins on October 31st. We considered ourselves educated and too refined for such nonsense." He shrugged. "I guess those feelings stayed with my family all these centuries. Not to mention that it would be a contradiction for vampires to carve pumpkins."

Tony was quiet for a few moments, which scared Rudolph into thinking that he had offended his friend, until a bout of laughter escaped from Tony. "There's so many things wrong with what you just said!" He exclaimed between laughs.

"W-what do you mean?" Rudolph asked, confused.

"Listen: how would it be a contradiction? You _are _a contradiction. The living-dead? You were a vampire; doesn't that prove that the peasants' superstitions were true? And yet you still never carved a pumpkin because of that?"

"Jack-o'-lanterns were meant to ward off evil spirits, Tony. We _were_ evil spirits. It wasn't exactly practical for us to carve a pumpkin."

"I guess I didn't think of it that way." Tony grinned. "So that explains why after 300 centuries you've never done this before."

"Correct. We aristocrats considered ourselves so intelligent and aware of the world, but in the end we turned out to be the fools." Rudolph looked to the Sun, which was beginning to set. "Perhaps if we would have carved pumpkins, or at least prepared ourselves for the supernatural, we never would have been turned into such monsters."

"What do you mean?" Tony asked, sensing that the light topic had taken a darker turn.

"As clichéd as it may sound, we were turned on All Hallow's Eve." Rudolph's eyes never left the sunset. "There was an attack on this night, all those years ago. My entire family was there, my entire family was killed, and my entire family was born anew. For weeks we remained in the manor, along with the clan of vampires that changed us. They made our manor into a coven for vampires, teaching us the ways of the undead. They said there was a shorage of vampires in the world, and they had gone on a quest to create fledglings." He looked back at Tony. "I've never told you this, have I?"

Tony shook his head.

"Please forgive me. It is something my family does not like to discuss." His gaze fell on his pumpkin, yet he wasn't really looking at it; he seemed to be thinking.

"It's fine. Um, is it okay if I ask something?" Tony watched for a reaction from his friend. After a moment, Rudolph nodded his head. "How did you escape your home?"

Rudolph chuckled. "I knew you were going to ask that. Home: what a funny name to call it that. For the first nine years of my life, yes, it was home." He was smiling, but it wasn't happy. "We did what we had to do, I'll leave it at that for now. We weren't about to stay there for all eternity, which we were doomed to live. That was what he thought at least, until we found out about the stone." It was then that he snapped out of his daze, gasping. "Oh Tony, I'm terribly sorry! I didn't mean to distract us with such a morbid tale." He looked at Tony aghast, horrified that he had made the mood so dreary. He had probably hurt Tony's feelings, scared him senseless, or both.

To his surprise, Tony genuinely smiled at him. "No worries, dude. I'm glad you shared that with me. That took a lot of guts." Tony held up a handful of pumpkin goop. "Speaking of guts!" He laughed at his corny joke, which was apparently contagious because Rudolph couldn't help but laugh as well.

"Come on, let's finish these jack-o'-lanterns."

The boys stood in Tony's yard under the balcony, the same spot where Rudolph had fallen when he tried to fly while weak just over a year ago. They were standing with their arms akimbo to their hips, looking up and and admiring their handiwork left on the ledge of the balcony. They had finished their jack-o'-lanterns and lit them, then ran downstairs to see what they looked like from below. Both were rather impressive, they thought. Tony's was a grinning pumpkin with two fangs protruding from the top and slitted eyes to make it look menacing. Rudolph's had large circular eyes, similar to the shape of the rims on Tony's glasses, and a wide grin with no teeth.

"Your jack-o'-lantern looks quite dashing," Rudolph complimented.

"Your jack-o'-lantern could light up a room!" Tony added, then laughed at his pun. Rudolph rolled his eyes, however smiling at the joke nonetheless. "Hey, Rudolph?"

"Yes?"

"I don't think you were ever an evil spirit."

"...You've never met the old me."

"I don't have to."

The two friends wrapped an arm around the other's shoulder and hip (Tony wasn't tall enough to reach Rudolph's shoulders yet) while they watched the light of their pumpkins flicker. "Thank you, Tony."


End file.
